Different Method of Applying Compression To your Drums

In electronic music often the drums can get washed over or sound to thin, this tutorial will teach you how to thicken and sharpen the drums using compression

you will already need to know how to do the following:
- know how to use a compressor
- divide a sample into 2 channels
*note* if your DAW cant divide 1 sample into 2 channels then simply load a duplicate drum into the mixer

To avoid Confusion: please note i reference threshold as the more it approaches a negative infinity the higher i consider the threshold.


my goal is NOT to acheive the loudest sound you can get at a low dynamic volume but to achieve the clearest and clean sound as possible, and this compression method can deliver that, because in modern electronic music when you have many different percussion playing, a short quick sound needs to cut through the mix to distinguish multiple hats but with short quickness, u loose the thickness of the drum, thats what the 2nd compressor does it gives back the thickness lost in compressor 1 but is not as loud and doesn't cut through the mix as much which allows a cleaner sound

one may think why not just use 1 compressor and make it cut through a mix keeping it thick... well you can do that but with multi hats, if you make the thick full hat sound cut through u muddle up the percussions

my goal is only to achieve short quick sounds cutting through the mix at first on the attack but also bringing back some of the thickness lost but at a lower volume and with some hats and cyms extending the tail ends by boosting their volumes at higher -db thresholds on the release, this wont muddle up the mix if you were to do so with only 1 compressor

Bonus: with this you can apply certain affects like delays and reverbs to compressor 2 to create a background effect without affecting the sound released from compressor 1, this leaves compressor one producing a clean dry sound while the thicker longer sound is heard on the delay providing extra thickness and life to your drums



So how do you do this:

With your drums divide into two channels:

Channel 1: set little or none attack, set the compression ratio really high, with a low threshold (very little -db) and quick release, you will need to set a low gain in db when considering a high compression ratio in order to cut the drum sound off quickly with the release

Channel 2: set a high -db threshold, low ratio and slowish attack, release is what suits best for length of the drum. You want a high -db threshold approaching infinity ex -40db because this will make the tail end of hats louder and not lost in a mix but neither too loud to interfere with compressor 1


Mix them together and get the balance where the peak of the lightly compressed channel is heard on the attack of the drums but the compressed channel is heard more on the delay This will bring life and power to the drums

Below is a diagram explaining how this works:



the possibilities that diagram to can look like are endless, sometimes the 2nd compressor can bring more volume into the mix, this would make the peak volume rise after it has fallen in a given time, its kind of like a side chain compression but only the peak is heard on the kick for a short instance and then comes in rising later before the next kick. With this method u can really morph sounds to your liking than just with 1 compressor, and play around with dynamic ranges.

For more advanced producers, you may want to invest time in experimenting with multi-band compressors, i do this with multiband comrpessors because it allows different bands of frequencies to be comrpessed differently

If anyone disagree's with this, i'm fine with that, but this is how i compress my drums for my 2011 tracks, i hope it helps those who find an understanding in it.

[Hydro Hellsing]

I ran into another tutorial about half a year back that gives a method of routing Drums to the same compressor channel because it makes them sound more merged, tried it and it works, not for every mix as the tutorial said it wouldn't but it's a nice technique I've found, never use myself tho cuz I've never needed too, just something to play with, my personal advice for anyone that uses that technique is route the Drums to seperate channels, than route those compressed Drums to a master compressor, regular or multiband is up to you, can't vouch in the least for how it sounds, like I said I've never needed to do any of that plus it depends on the quality of the oneshots/samples you use, just something to play with per new track.. I also recommend trying techniques like that with synths/perc and whatever else, can't hurt to experiment.